1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for controlling a sleep mode in a portable terminal, and more particularly, to a method and an apparatus for controlling a sleep mode in a portable terminal in which a notice screen is displayed before entering the sleep mode in order to temporarily set a sleep mode timer setting and operate a screen maintaining mode such that the portable terminal does not switch to the sleep mode until a sleep mode timer expires.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, portable terminals have become capable of providing voice call services, various data transmission services, and other value-added services, thus evolving such portable terminals into multimedia devices. Therefore, the usage time of portable terminals has increased, and various methods are being used to increase battery life of these terminals. One such method is to cut off a power supply to a portion of peripheral devices, such as a display, and enter into a sleep mode in order to reduce power consumption when there is no user input during a predetermined time period.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a conventional process of entering into a sleep mode in a portable terminal.
As shown in FIG. 1, according to a sleep mode timer setting set by a user in advance, when no user input is received for a predetermined period of time while a screen as shown in FIG. 1(a) is displayed, a portable terminal enters into a sleep mode as shown in FIG. 1(b). When the portable terminal enters into the sleep mode, power to a portion of peripheral devices is cut off such that, for example, an LCD screen is turned off.
As shown in FIG. 1(b), when the portable terminal enters into the sleep mode, the LCD screen is turned off, which is inconvenient when the user needs to release the sleep mode to check an operation of the portable terminal.
Until recently, content available to portable terminals was limited and did not require a significant amount of storage. However, recently, the content available to portable terminals has been diversified and has also increased in size such that a designated time for entering a sleep mode may arrive while a user gathers content with a high volume of information.
When a portable terminal enters into a sleep mode while the content is gathered, this transition causes an inconvenience in that the user must wake up the portable terminal from the sleep mode. When the content has a very large volume or the time set for entering into the sleep mode is short, the above process may be repeated several times. However, if the time for entering into the sleep mode is set long enough to avoid the above-described scenario, unnecessary power consumption is incurred.